Fairbanks, Alaska - A new report now available to the public
examines how rapid climate change could affect Alaska's wildlife
and ecosystems.

The publication is the culmination
of a two-year effort to model future shifts in species and regional
ecosystems by scientists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
the UAF Scenarios Network for Alaska Planning and the Ecological
Wildlife Habitat Data Analysis for the Land and Seascape. It
offers policymakers and the public a practical way to approach
the question of climate change effects on Alaska ecosystems.

Researchers prepared models
that matched regional ecosystems' seasonal temperature and precipitation
with ranges of animal species. They then projected potential
shifts within each ecosystem as the climate changes. Results
suggest that by 2100, climate conditions in 60 percent of Alaska
may have shifted to resemble those associated with a different
regional ecosystem. The climate in almost all of western and
northwestern coastal Alaska is projected to differ from current
conditions. The project also examined potential effects on four
species: barren-ground caribou, Alaska marmots, trumpeter swans
and reed canary grass.

"Scenarios planning is
not intended to produce a single definitive prediction, but rather
to provide stakeholders with a range of descriptions of possible
futures, in order to better inform risk-taking and decision making,"
said Nancy Fresco, SNAP coordinator. "Our hope is that this
document will serve as a jumping-off point for lively discussion
and debate, and will help inform and inspire new research, as
well as efforts to ground-truth and validate our models."

The efforts were supported
by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Further work is underway
in Alaska and Canada, incorporating new methodology, multiple
sources of land-cover data and a wider range of model inputs
to improve the analysis of the regional shifts.